Race against time

Today it was an engaging ordeal for me on the personal front. Apart from the daily recipe of infantile salvation from an otherwise turbulent schedule, the institute had more to offer, a typically managerial ploy. Only two classes and adding to the exhileration was a cancelled financial management quiz. I believe, the system of management education leans excessively towards an offshoot of time management, that is time deployment. It's left to the candidates to decide how they plan to distribute the precious microseconds and nanoseconds, even if it means the installation of an atomic clock in the premises of their cerebral faculties.

Since Time happens to be the crux of my Blogger musings today, I deem it relevant to devise an infallible mechanism wherein we can control the sanctity of the so-called Boundless entity which leaves no stones unturned to ravage the possiblities of any substantial permanence. If time could be controlled as desired by any paranoid individual much to the deliberate surprise of his/her less fortunate peers, what would happen? It would definitely place the power of attorney in the hands of the former as a result of which various shades of despotic behaviour would start engulfing his mindset. Well, then how can one control time in the first place? Would he require to formulate a recipe by dint of which he can moderate his speed with respect to that of light? Einstein must be amused at the advent of such a technique for he could never be able to believe that human beings would equate scientific paradigms with psychological insanity.

But, such a concept, if ever to evolve would tremendously alter the very foundation of business. Stock markets would never exist, since the future value of expected cash flows would never be realized. The sundry equations corresponding to statistical techniques such as regression, forecasting would be rendered void. Money would lose its flavour, as people would travel back and forth to marginalize any fiscal trade-offs. Life would complete a full circle without any apprehension for decay and continue being looped around.

Well, fantastic as it may sound, such a concept might still be adorning the chapters of any Carl Sagan classic or Stephen Hawking journal though. In reality, the logic that would most certainly apply to the business arena is the control of time as a factor of the various daily activities. Some would incidentally refer it to as time management, but I would differ so far as the word management is concerned. When we say management, we tend to bring in an activity that is controllable. Once we are able to control something even if partially, we could proceed to manage it. But, an all-pervading entity called time could neither be controlled nor managed given the kind of era we exist in. Hence, the closest possible task we can undertake so as to appreciate the power of time is distribution. Time is measured in terms of the number and duration of activities we have at any instance. If we are able to allot best possible proportions to each of the tasks at hand, we could consider ourselves privileged to have had a wonderful time. That is the recursive beauty of time.

Now, the business scenario calls for a perfect balance between the tasks at hand and the proportion of time slots attached to each. In order to distribute the proportions perfectly among the tasks, we need to cleanse the redundancy in the first place. By redundancy, I mean the proportion of time utilized unproductively. For example, if in the early hours of the morning, while hurrying for a crucial meeting, I try to squeeze out whatever is left in an empty toothpaste tube only to end with nothing. In trying to do so, I have wasted a significant amount of time allotted to the process of brushing teeth. This wastage could cause me inconvenience in the time ahead if I miss the meeting thereafter. Had I replaced the empty tube with a new one the previous day, I would not have had to face this situation at all. Here, stands a situation, which clearly shows that any aberration in the continuity of time tends to spark off a chain of highly unorganized events furthering the risk of annihilation.

Distribution precedes management as far as time is concerned.